Nuclear Midnight (16 page)

‘Then you will let us have the supplies?’ Cliff asked eagerly.

‘If you pass your medical and you are both carpenters, as you say you are, then I'll consider it.’ He gave a brief smile and turned back towards the mine.

‘When will you let us know?’ Cliff called after him.

‘If your medical report is good, you'll hear by tomorrow morning,’ he called back before disappearing from view.

The medical lasted for nearly two hours. Both men had to strip off and submit to scrupulous external examinations. Every bruise, abrasion or lump of any kind was carefully recorded. Samples of their blood, their faeces and their urine were taken away for analysis, and their throats were swabbed. While the results of these tests were being assessed, they were asked about their movements since the holocaust. How close had they been to a bomb zone? How long did they stay under cover? Were they ever sick? What did they eat? Where did they find their food? The questions flowed past them in an endless stream, and when they were complete, they were required to sign their names to their statements.

Then, at last, they were free to go and were led to a large kitchen on the second floor of the mine, where they were invited to eat as much as they liked. In front of them were pots of steaming noodles, mixed with canned meat and vegetables, freshly baked bread, thick vegetable broth and a pot of hot coffee. The sight of so much food was enough to make them giddy, but they did not constrain themselves. Finally, almost dead on their feet, their bellies full and bloated, they were conducted to the dormitories and given beds for the night. Despite their precarious circumstances, neither man could remember even laying his head on the pillow.

Early the next morning a tall, nervous looking youth woke them and introduced himself, in a pronounced cockney accent, as Rashi. He had a note for them from Marcus, which read:

Congratulations, you have both passed your medicals with flying colours. The arrangements for your trip have been made. Rashi will issue you with all the medical supplies you will need and drive you as far south as is safe to do so.

Best wishes and a safe journey,

Marcus.

Rashi had already organised a week's supply of food for them, and enough medical supplies to cover just about any contingency. He took them straight to a Land Rover and marked both their foreheads with white paint. They were given special passes to show to the border guards on their return, and an extra two for Tina and Alex.

By late morning they had reached the most southerly point of the community, a small outpost manned by half a dozen men. Neither Cliff nor Roy had said much during the trip. The indulgences of the night before were already forgotten under the urgency they both felt. In the Land Rover they had spoken of trying to reach Alex and Tina by late the next day. Rashi had doubted this was possible, but even one night's delay seemed criminal when they had the medicines to cure Tina’s sickness in their hands. Leaving Rashi and the men at the outpost, after a brief farewell, they set off almost at a jog.

Three days later, exhausted and desperate after spending a day and a night lost amongst the hills, they burst into the house. There was no one there and no explanation as to why not. Ten minutes later, while searching the surroundings, Roy came on a wooden cross planted over a freshly dug mound of earth. The words scratched on the wood read:

TINA HARTLEY

20 years of age

a brave soul,

much loved and missed

They widened their search at once, and after several hours they found Alex perched on a boulder overlooking a frozen stream. His jumper and his gloves were missing, his hands soiled, his nails split and bloody. In spite of repeated attempts to make him talk, he did not respond. Finally, Roy took off his jumper and they wrapped him in it and urged him back to the house.

The following day, Cliff and Roy led the forlorn and silent figure of Alex back towards the mine.

Three years later

CHAPTER 7

Since its inception the community had grown enormously. As the word spread, refugees had flooded in from all corners of England and Wales. By the end of the first year its numbers had swelled to nearly twenty thousand; by the second year they had reached thirty thousand, until by the end of the third year there were over thirty five thousand members. At the same time its influence had extended to the east and south, until it controlled territory from Porthmadog on the coast, across the Welsh highlands as far as the Welsh border and north to Colwyn Bay. All the land to the west, including the island of Anglesey, was under its command.

But for each new member who was accepted, many more were rejected and expelled into the wilderness. These exiles formed roaming bands on the borders of the community who constantly threatened the security of its inhabitants. Therefore new members were required to undertake defence training. This included military drill, hand to hand combat and small arms practice for all ages, except the very young. Children were given basic schooling and adults received lessons in farming and building skills. When this stage was complete, the peacetime occupation of each person was examined and he or she was placed in the position which would be most beneficial to the community. Free choice, personal fulfilment, democracy, in fact all the terms and phrases held dear before the war, meant nothing here. In the eyes of the community, the individual no longer existed, except as one more cog or workhorse to be used creatively for the general good. The colonists were told when they could sleep, when they could eat, what job they could do, where they could do it and for how long. No facet of one's life was left open for individual decision.

Laws were formulated and passed by a committee of twelve men and women. Their authority was absolute and the principle on which they worked was that the well-being of the community overrode all other considerations. If someone was pronounced diseased, or was insubordinate, or refused to work, he or she was given a week's supply of food and expelled. Only exceptionally gifted or invaluable members such as doctors, nurses, engineers or agricultural advisers could hope for a reprieve. Even in their cases, however, they were certain to be removed as soon as a suitable replacement could be found. Such a person didn't last long in the wild, the food they carried being more attractive to the other exiles than any skills they might happen to possess.

But the harsh laws of the community paid off. There had never been a significant outbreak of disease, their external defences had not been seriously breached, and vast agricultural and building projects were constantly pushing the frontier eastward through the Welsh highlands. As a matter of policy, all arable land had been converted to agriculture and the hills to the rough grazing of sheep and cattle. Extensive chicken farms had been set up in the lowlands and the seas were being harvested again. With these successes the community's own produce now accounted for over eighty percent of the total food consumption. Dried foods, such as fruit and cereal, were still being supplied from the dwindling reserves of the mine.

However, the future of the community remained uncertain. After the war, the land had changed from a dark smoky wasteland, tortured by snow storms and gale force winds to the climate of a savannah. Midday temperatures often climbed into the high thirties, little rain fell and winds constantly ripped through the land.

The first harvest had been an unqualified disaster. Radiation and freezing conditions had laid a poisonous frozen crust on the ground, which had to be peeled off and taken away by hand before any crops could be planted. Even then, each fall of rain or snow brought down more radiation. The new crops germinated and withered under the poor half-light of the sun. The poor harvest was then attacked by an insect plague from the east and their ravages had scarcely ceased when a rat plague followed, devouring the insects and anything else in their path. Even tethered cattle were attacked. The rats tore at the legs of these beasts until they collapsed, kicking and grunting, under a tide of gnashing teeth and ripping claws. Then they in turn starved and disappeared from the land.

The next harvest was better. This time the improved weather conditions had allowed most of the crops to germinate and start shooting. The insects appeared again, but now the colonists were ready for them with pesticides drawn from the store in the mine. Very slowly the crops struggled towards the sun. As the rain was more infrequent, huge irrigation channels were dug and water pumped by hand from pre-war reservoirs near Mount Snowdon. The whole community held its breath while the crops grew, but as harvesting day approached it became evident that the cereals had not swelled in the ear, and the vegetables, small and parched above the ground, were withered in their roots.

Fortunately, there were a number of environmental and agricultural experts among the survivors in the community. They explained how the drastically altered climatic conditions were affecting the whole cycle of nature. Apart from smoke, the incineration of the world’s forests and cities had also released billions of tonnes of nitrogen. This nitrogen combined with oxygen to form nitric oxides, which in turn produced ozone on the earth's surface. In the stratosphere, however, the formation of these nitric oxides actually had the reverse effect and destroyed the ozone layer. Previously, by converting ultra violet light to heat, the ozone had formed a warm, protective envelope around the earth’s surface. Now that the ozone was on the planet's surface and not in the stratosphere, UV light penetrated to the surface and heated it, creating a greenhouse effect. Apart from raising the surface temperatures both the UV light and ozone also affected plant growth by destroying vulnerable shoot tips.

To add to these problems the mine was critically short of fertilisers and farming implements. Without fertilisers the type of intensive agriculture that had evolved in Great Britain before the holocaust was not possible. Although the machinery for such farming still existed and could be repaired, the fuel to power it was not available. The supplies the mine possessed had to be used on essentia1 services, like the transport of materials and on generators for the production of light and heat. The farmers amongst the community had therefore to revert to skills they had discarded as old fashioned and in which they had no experience.

These difficulties were debated in committee for weeks before a new farming strategy emerged. In broad terms, this entailed protecting the crops in every conceivable way; nothing was left to chance. Vast glass houses were to be constructed covering many hectares of land. The glass would exclude UV light, radioactive fallout and any sudden insect plaques, and at the same time provide a safe working environment. All water to be used in irrigation was first to be sand filtered in huge tanks, under the force of gravity, to remove any radioactive particles. Large amounts of decomposing vegetable matter were also scavenged from the surrounding countryside and placed in these glass houses to provide the carbon dioxide vital for plant growth. These changes, once introduced, were soon rewarded with results.

Although the number of crops grown was relatively small because of the labour involved and the difficulty in finding materials to build the glass houses, the potatoes flourished, and the corn grew high. The community had achieved its first major success.

The rearing of farm animals, however, presented an entirely different set of problems, which were not so happily solved. Finding sufficient feed was easy enough since grass was one of the most resistant forms of plant life. The surrounding hills and plains had quickly become blanketed with a flowing mat of green, but heavy fallout limited their apparent usefulness. When cattle and sheep grazed in the open they concentrated certain long life isotopes, such as caesium 137 in their tissues, and iodine 131 and Strontium 90 in their milk. Only by cultivating grass especially for feed could this drawback be overcome, and there just was not the manpower or the glass covering available to do this. So if meat was to be eaten, a proportion of radioactivity had to be tolerated in the diet. Specialist teams were formed to investigate the problem. A partial solution was found by converting all milk into hard products such as cheese, where the radioactive mineral content had been reduced. But for this generation at least, a complete alteration of diet was deemed essential, and was introduced. Cereals such as barley, oats, maize, rye and oilseed rape, which before the war had been used largely for animal feed, now had to be made palatable for human consumption. Meats and fresh eggs were to be taken only in small quantities, so as not to exceed the radiation tolerance level of the body. In effect, the community became almost vegetarian, eating mostly cereals, breads, cheeses, fruits and small amounts of salted meats.

Long before Alex drew near in his Land Rover, his presence had been detected by look outs in a series of black slate turrets and radioed back to the mine. With the manpower at their command, the community had been able to deploy a force of over four thousand men and women in turrets like these, along the whole length of the border. Like the threads of a spider's web, the slightest twitch or disturbance in the surrounding countryside could bring reinforcements scurrying to the scene.

Alex passed through without incident and was driving for another hour before he reached the nerve centre of the mine. He parked the Land Rover in the service and maintenance area, where it would receive a thorough overhaul after each mission, and climbed out and stretched his limbs.

Three years had wrought its changes in Alex. He was barely twenty five, but he looked ten years older. Like most survivors all fleshiness had disappeared from his face. His skin now clung in a taut, lined mask to his bones, giving him an almost haunted look. The wasting of his face had also enlarged his eyes, making them more intense and sad somehow, as though he was keeping some enormous flood of emotion bottled up there.

Alex turned from gazing down the valley, walked round to the front of the Land Rover and began slowly packing various papers into a small leather satchel on the front seat. He had just completed this task when Cliff suddenly appeared from behind one of the vehicles. The sight of him both delighted and perturbed Alex. The little carpenter had become his closest and most treasured companion. Cliff possessed a rare quality of total, incorruptible honesty. His opinions were his own and he stated them with a bluntness which most people found upsetting, but which Alex never failed to admire. Their discussions had no hidden undertones; each man spoke out and respected the opinion of the other. Together they shared a strange type of alliance against the community, Cliff because of his natural hatred of rules and regulations, Alex because he hated everything the community stood for. He loathed its harshness, its inhumanity. The system was working; they were winning against the elements but at what a cost! The day of human individuality was gone forever.

And it saddened Alex to see how sick Cliff looked. Much of his hair had dropped out and refused to grow again. A skin cancer was starting to swell on his face, and his arms and legs had withered, as though some malign thing was eating away at him from the inside. It was sickening to watch and always became more noticeable after long trips away.

The carpenter stood up and embraced him. ‘It's great to see you,’ he grinned, barely able to contain his own relief. ‘Everyone's been concerned, you're two weeks overdue. What the hell was so bloody interesting?’

The intensity of Cliff's greeting surprised Alex. ‘Things just took longer than I anticipated,’ he answered mildly.

Cliff shook his head. After each mission Alex seemed to come back more withdrawn into himself than ever. ‘I thought you were finished this time. I prayed you weren't, but by God I was worried. Give it up, man, you've already run more missions than anyone still alive. Stop before you get yourself killed.’

Alex raised his eyebrows, but did not speak.

They had been over this ground before. Cliff was aware of Alex’s suicidal tendencies and had done his best to snap him out of them, but Alex had so little desire for life left.

Cliff sighed deeply, but decided not to pursue the matter for the moment. ‘What did you find in London?’

‘Just more unsolved mysteries, I'm afraid.’

Cliff frowned. ‘So London is the same as the other cities?’

‘Worse in some respects. There seem to be pockets of radiation all over the city.’

‘The committee isn't going to be pleased.’

Alex nodded slightly. In his opinion, the committee would have every right to feel concerned. He walked around to the front of the Land Rover and stared out at the sunset. ‘That's eight cities that have registered high radiation counts,’ he said, more to himself than to Cliff. ‘It’s not right. If this was fallout, it would be all over the place. There wouldn't be intense patches everywhere.’

‘So you don't think your readings are from fallout?’

‘I don't know what to think.’

‘Maybe the committee will come up with the answer.’

‘Maybe.’

Cliff watched the exhausted silhouette of his friend. He knew that something else was troubling him, but Alex rarely revealed what he was thinking these days. Although he was open enough about minor problems, it always seemed to Cliff that he had permanently closed off that part of him that Tina had once shared. He drew nearer to him, studying his face and trying to assess his mood. ‘Did you run into any problems on the trip?’

‘No… no the trip was fine.’ He fell silent, as though reliving his experiences in his mind. ‘It was like walking back in time and seeing it all over again,’ he said after a pause. ‘No one has been there since the holocaust. Skeletons all over the place, very little plant life and the rats, and flies…’ He shook his head. ‘So many rats! And they were so hungry they started to tear into my clothing. I had to continually kick them away.’